


Brand New

by entanglednow



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-28
Updated: 2010-02-28
Packaged: 2017-10-14 16:49:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/151401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/entanglednow/pseuds/entanglednow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Donna wasn't giving up without a fight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brand New

  
The universe likes a joke as much as the next person. Probably more than the next person what with all that matter and energy, and enough time to always make sure the punch line was really good.

The thing was, the human part of Donna Noble wasn't ready to die. The hastily patched in Time Lord part of her wasn't ready to die. But then neither wanted to be consumed. Both as stubborn as each other, both as loud, both as frenzied in their bid to _continue_. With every furious particle they had left.

Death wasn't an option.

But the Time Lord part of her refused to be buried, to be packed away, neatly pressed and folded and diminished. The messy part in the middle, the part that was a mixture of both. It said _resist_.

It was survival of the fittest and Donna wasn't giving up without a fight. Not when the prize was space in her own head.

There was only one other option.

Regeneration.

And once Donna's mind settled on something. By God it did it.

Which is how she ends up on the floor with hair in her face. Feeling like she's the wrong shape inside her old clothes. Not as full, taller maybe, or shorter, that was hard to tell lying down, and the grating's freezing cold under her behind.

The Doctor's looking down at her like she's just done something amazing, all speechlessness and gawping. Which makes him look for all the world like his face is spilling stupid everywhere.

He must hate that.

She gets up, using most of his arm to help while he crouches there, flapping ineffectually like a fish.

Her hair is brown, a great mess of it is hanging to the left. Longer than before where it lays against her shoulder. It's not the strange, slippery newly dyed brown. It's smooth and ever so slightly cold. Not as thick as her normal hair, as her own hair and she gets stuck trying to tuck it behind her ears.

She's left feeling, bizarrely, like she's touching someone else and that's not a sensation she's happy about.

The Doctor's off flapping somewhere else now, muttering things that Donna could probably understand if she wasn't still wondering _who on earth she was._

"I have to wear new clothes and things," Donna says shakily and her voice is soft and strange on her tongue. "That's how it works right. I die, my entire body atomises itself and restructures itself into another me. So now I have to wear different clothes and get a new personality and suddenly I'm a different me. Maybe one who laughs in a funny way and gets drunk and wears more hats. Am I a hat person now, do I even get any choice in the matter or does the universe go 'tough luck sunshine you're going to bloody love the hats this time.' As far as I'm concerned death should not be an excuse for bad taste."

"Breathe, Donna." The Doctor very careful presses a cup of tea into her hands and Donna holds it for a long second letting the warmth seep through her fingers and not saying anything at all.

Or maybe she's just getting enough breath for another go.

Her hands are different. Even if she hadn't been able to see it already she'd know she was no longer a redhead by her hands. None of that delicate strange paleness, no scatter of freckles where the skin sees the sun.

"My hands are different now too, different hands, different me. They're someone else's hands," Donna protests.

The Doctor catches her wrists, making her cup jiggle.

"No, they're your hands, you're still you," the Doctor says, slowly, carefully. Like she's been in a horrible accident and he thinks she might be in shock.

Maybe she is, maybe this version of her shocks easily.

"You are, without doubt, as much _you_ as when I first met you," the Doctor insists.

"Funny that, considering I'm now an alien with a different face," Donna protests tartly. Then drinks her tea, because there are some things you just can't resist.

It still tastes the same, which is _something_.

The Doctor grins at her, one of those silly, half-demented, childish grins that shouldn't make everything better.

"Oh, Donna Noble, you really think that's going to stop you?"

It shouldn't make everything better.

Donna huffs and hands him the empty cup.

"Go and make me another cup of tea, you great lanky bean."


End file.
